Thanks
by Lively Aria
Summary: A postep fic for Abyss 6:06


Thanks

_By_ Aria

Rating: Same as the show

Disclaimer: Not mine

Spoilers: Abyss

Synopsis: post-ep

~ * ~ * ~

Jack gasped for air, sitting upright quickly and gasping for breath. Nightmares, always nightmares, if it weren't for the painful tug against his arm he wouldn't have realised he was back in the infirmary, back on the base, safe.

He lowered himself back onto soft infirmary mattress slowly, his right hand carefully reaching over to cover the cannula in his left elbow crook. It complained little as it was pressed down again, but showed no signs of bleeding under its transparent plastic plaster.

Jack fidgeted in an attempt to find a slightly drier patch of sheet, but in his dreams he'd soaked them with cold sweat, and now they clung to his back and bottom – in the groove of his standard issue hospital gown. As he relented to the sensation of wetness he realised another reason for his sweats, the throbbing in his head and a tremor of his arm – sarcophagus withdrawal.

Jack pressed his head into the pillow and tried to keep his body as still as possible. He felt cold and desperately suppressed the urge to shiver. Daniel had been a little like this after his ordeal – years ago. Daniel had been worse, actually, and Jack refused to let himself consider this as anything more than trivial.

"Hey Jack." The familiar voice distracted him momentarily.

Jack looked to the foot of the bed, the source of the voice. Daniel gave him a grim smile and watched, waiting for a response.

"I guess I was wondering if you were going to show up." Now that he was home, on the base, he thought that perhaps he'd imagined Daniel keeping him company at Ba'al's base. His presence here, now that he was suffering withdrawal didn't entirely persuade him that he hadn't imagined him.

"This isn't the hardest part, Jack. The hardest part passed whilst you were asleep." Daniel spoke cryptically.

"The withdrawal…" Daniel only nodded his ascent.

"You've done it before." He pointed out; a few seconds after Jack's head had started to pound again.

Jack recalled days spent hiding under tarpaulin and seeking refuge in the houses of frightened Iraqis. A little heroin during interrogation was a wonderful way to encourage enemy soldiers to speak during the war. Jack had been captured and succumbed to addiction but managed to avoid revealing secrets in a drug induced haze. More skilful interrogation was about to be called in for him. Jack's withdrawal had only happened after he'd overpowered the guard, in a blaze of Morpheus induced power. It was only on his escape he'd realised just how hooked he'd been. By the time the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières doctors had found him all that was left was to rehydrate him.

When Daniel had recovered from his addiction Jack had confessed to his own. Daniel had been irritable and angry – wondering why that particular pep talk hadn't happened when he'd been suffering, but Jack was sure that Daniel understood now.

"Do you know why?" Daniel leant forward on his elbows. Daniel wasn't privy to the snippets of memory that Jack was, he hadn't seen Jack's hallucinations of Shallom. He only knew what little Jack had told him in the cell.

"He did what I would've done." Jack replied, "He saw all our missions through me." He gazed past Daniel at the nurses walking between beds in front of him. They closed the curtain around his bed.

Daniel nodded, "Because you…"

Jack cut Daniel off. "I'd never leave her behind." Jack heard footsteps in the adjacent cubicles. Perhaps it was another teams' routine medical? There didn't seem to be any urgency in the footsteps or the orders being passed amongst Janet's staff.

"Sam?"

Daniel startled him. "What?" a brief pause. "No, Shallom, I wouldn't have left her…"

"You said 'leave' so I assumed…"

Daniel's grammar nitpicking had actually revealed a Freudian slip; Jack was forced to glance back at him in surprise. He scowled. The archaeologist was dead, ascended, but the officers behind him were very real. "Can they hear us?" He queried. He wasn't interrupting. Daniel had silenced when he'd noticed his friend's attention was diverted.

"No." Daniel replied

"But, I'm talking."

"Actually you're talking in your head."

"Oh," Jack found himself wondering which level, of the many potential levels, of crazy he was on. "Oh, right."

Daniel pursed his lips again in a grim smile and nodded at his companion. He didn't appear alone to people often. Oma never needed to explain herself to those she helped ascend. Daniel could almost understand his friends' confusion.

"I need to forget about her."

"Shallom?" Daniel asked, confused.

"Carter." Jack replied. Daniel nodded, urging him on.

"If there was one thing that I…" Jack didn't know how to say this. He wanted his old buddy, his Daniel here, someone to offer advice. He didn't want a sage or wise ascend-ant? "I nearly gave up Shallom. I don't want to do that to Carter."

Daniel hadn't been there when Ba'al had tortured Jack. He knew that there was nothing he could do for his friend and that every second in that torture chamber would've angered him. There was so much more he could do for the galaxy with wise words at choice times. He couldn't afford to anger the others. "But you didn't." was all he could offer his friend as comfort.

"I was close, Daniel." Jack spoke surely and quietly. No trace of his sarcastic or mellow self. He sounded like a man condemned; perhaps this was what he had done to himself.

Daniel nodded. He didn't know what to say. Jack may have been walking around the issue, but they both knew that he was admitting to feeling something for Sam. Daniel knew the US Air Force had rules on fraternisation. Breaking them was out of the question, except perhaps at death's door. Daniel wondered if the experience his friend had been through had changed him at all. At length, Daniel spoke "You care about her."

"Such a simple phrase," Jack felt philosophical, "it can mean so much more."

"Love" Daniel supplied, instantly wishing he hadn't. He glanced over at Jack, wondering what reaction the phrase would get. Jack's eyes were focussed on the ceiling of the room. He seemed to have let out a sigh.

Time seemed to pause for a moment while the word sunk into Jack's mind. He didn't realise that you could grow together in the same way inside and outside a relationship. He hadn't seen it coming; that he would walk with Samantha Carter in the woods, fire weapons side by side, lead her on missions as every man before her - rarely see her in anything other than her uniform and that something would still shine through. One day she'd smiled ruefully at a joke made at her expense and he'd caught himself thinking about her smile.

He was relieved when Daniel asked "So, what are you going to do to forget Sam then?"

"The usual" Jack replied, wishing for a second that he could've called upon Daniel for company whilst he drank at bars and steak houses and hustled pretty women at pool.

Daniel grimaced, imagining the alcohol intake that went with getting over a girl. He'd heard women say that 'to get over one man, you need to get under another' and imagined Jack downing bourbon in hotel bars, steak houses and jazz clubs.

In Jack's mind, he stood and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. He vanished.


End file.
